Cassandra Rose Clarke

Author

Cassandra Rose Clarke grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and teaches composition at a pair of local colleges. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. Her work has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her latest novel is Our Lady of the Ice, out now from Saga Press. CassandraRoseClark.com. @mitochondrial.

In the 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev commissioned the construction of a giant underground bunker near the Czech town of Misov, located southwest of Prague and less than 40 miles from the German border. Some say that the site was such a guarded secret that it is not even known whether nuclear warheads were actually ever placed there, though many have surmised that the bunker was fully operational during the Cold War. So, what's left of the nuclear bunker? Take a look at these great photos!

As any real agent knows, inconspicuous accessories are some of the most important gear a spy can carry. Now, who can truly say they've never dreamed of owning a gun disguised as lipstick? James and Jane Bonds of the world, eat your heart out.

During the post-Stalin period, cultural institutions were given a new life and, fueled by increased cultural import, artistic experimentation grew dramatically throughout the country. This growth was particularly apparent in Czech film poster design, lasting even past the Prague Spring and up to the fall of the USSR. Take a look at some works by our favorite graphic designers of the era.

Microdot encryption, a spy favorite, refers the reduction of a text or an image to the size of a small disc, often the size and shape of a typographical dot, such as a period or the tittle of a lower-case j or i. This encryption technique was primarily used to prevent detection by unintended recipients, particularly when conveying sensitive or classified materials.

Who was Horace Pile? For a humble Australian electronics components salesman, he made a surprising number of visits to the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) at Salisbury. Could he have been one of the leading Soviet intelligence operatives in Australia?

After years of taking striking photos of Rromani people, Josef Koudelka stood before the tanks during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague. He smuggled out his images, which circulated the globe while he fled to Britain. Here's a look at his most poignant and powerful shots.